by Various
This pierced her for some reason she didn’t yet know, making her draw back a little. “You’re crazy.”
Richard’s face changed and he eased forward, elbows on his knees. “Oh, but that’s the worst part of all,” he said, perfectly reasonable. “I’m not crazy—you are. You and everyone else who believes their own delusions. There’s nothing crazier, my dear. Pain, suffering, wrong—that’s reality.” Pause. “Now, eat your food.”
Jane shook her head, but not to say no. His words made her feel sick in a new way.
“Eat,” Richard said again, his eyes burning holes.
When he didn’t look away, she snatched up the snack and took greedy, acquisitive bites, chewing openly. Anything to make him stop.
But he went on: “You chase these illusions of love, with your friends and your TV and your Hollywood.” Another dismissive headshake. “All lies, things to lure out your brain’s happy-chemicals, lock you into that bullshit movie you think is real life. But it’s not real, Jane. Pain is the only reality, and it’ll invalidate everything you’ve ever known. And you can run from it, deny it, but that world is always there. There and waiting for you…” He looked troubled as he finished, as though he scared himself.
She struggled down the last bite and tried not to see him. “You really believe this shit,” she said, but a trill of fear betrayed the accusation.
Richard’s fortitude returned. “I don’t have to convince you of anything, cunt,” he said in that monstrously even tone, like a fiendish phone recording. “You’ll learn soon enough, if you haven’t already.” He smiled. “And you have, haven’t you? You feel it, I can see it in your face, smell it on you like shit. You know it all as well as I do.” The smile went away. “Think about it. All that garbage you learned from your parents, from TV, school, your gospel—do those things seem real now, when you’re scared and weak and alone, with no one and nothing to reflect your stupid illusions?” His voice never raised.
Jane made no reply, answer in itself. Her right cheek ticced.
“Yes, you know,” Richard went on, doubtless. “Don’t deny it, Miss Jane. You’re comprehending yourself in new ways, seeing a whole new world. And the old world, what you thought was so real, it’s small and faraway, a child’s dream.” A deliberate pause. “Here’s my advice: accept it. Accept it, don’t fight it. You can learn so much from the pain, if you’ll just let it do what it does.”
“You’re crazy—”
Richard stood in a spry leap. “And the hate,” he said, grandly, continuing his sermon. “Doesn’t that feel real, realer than anything? You hate me, and rightly so, and it burns in you, burns brighter than the lies and the liars and your vanity, than any love you’ve ever known.” He crashed against the bars, making her jump. “I hate you, too, you know,” he said in a fast, gibbering cadence. “More than anything, because you’re just a stupid cuntshit who don’t know nothing. But we’re sharing something now. The hate, we’re sharing it, and it binds us. Can’t you feel it?” He was smiling again, and crying. “I savor this, what we have. I really do. It’s a kind of love, this, with more permanence than any you’ll ever know.”
She was crying, also. “Stop!” Her chin was tight and dented. Her face made wild movements as if receiving a current.
“I hate you, Jane,” Richard said, full and high, no different than one declaring the opposite. “Hate you so much.” He loitered around the bars a moment longer, fixing her with a lover’s gaze; then turned away. The rapture left him as he did so, as if coming down from a drug.
“Lesson three: everything’s fucked,” he said afterward, sounding like a different man. The other snack flew distractedly through the bars, and he kicked the water harder than necessary. The bottle turned lengthwise and didn’t go through, but it was within grabbing distance.
He left the room. Jane sobbed, suddenly wanting a shower.
Later that day: Richard in a department store two towns over. It was crowded, and he milled through the “people” with a wide berth and a silent hatred. He proceeded into a valley of hand tools and other manly articles, for the duct tape.
Don’t have to do this.
That damnable voice. He auditioned the thought, the tape hanging gravid in one hand. Maybe it was right, maybe he was free to do as he chose; could get along without his houseguests, alone. Richard had been alone most of his life, after all, even in a room full of people. He had long ago reconciled to it, become it, leaving him a living scar. It was hell, but one he could handle, one that felt like home.
Alone. He could handle alone.
Don’t have to…
Richard started to return the tape… but stopped: again, that scathing sense of reprimand, and strong. He could almost feel it—It, the presence, poking that most vulnerable part of him, an invisible knife. Anything to get what it wants.
Daemon, the bruja cunt had called it. Break the channel.
And he did want the channel broken, the presence gone… didn’t he? He’d thought so, before, but now that he knew how, the idea was terrifying. How long had It been there, offering its weird companionship? Long before his first kill, ten years ago. Since his formative years, maybe? Since birth? How would life be without It? Richard didn’t know, and it was the most frightening prospect of all: blind freedom, the great blank page, a devil foreign to him instead of that known so well.
The voice again, as though in answer: Don’t have to do this.
“No, I don’t,” Richard said aloud. “I just want to.” He left the aisle, tape in hand, and paid cash.
It was past dark when he returned to his tremendous house and locked the door, home closing in, the fastness like a breath of fresh air. He gathered some things and then went upstairs, to his old bedroom.
Her dinner was a snack bar spiked with barbituates, and after she’d passed out, he freed her from the bedroom cell and taped her securely to the chair. Construction plastic soon contracepted the floor, for the fluids. He then sat beside her, watching, the gleaming field knife on one knee.
She awoke some hours later, cracking rheumy caramel eyes. She looked at him blearily, then a second time, at the knife. She howled to be let go, jerking savagely in the chair, mute movement against her restraints. He could smell her stronger now, being so close. It was exquisite.
He let her struggle herself tired, then took up the knife and cleaned his fingernails, making a show of it.
“Please,” she said to the blade, the fight gone from her. “Won’t tell anybody. Just lemme go, just…” She used a childlike voice that Richard enjoyed very much. He was seeing the real woman now; the tip of the iceberg that was Her.
“Have a good sleep?” he asked, the knife in his left hand. Richard was a southpaw.
“Please.” Ugly tears.
“Oh stop it, you dumb bitch.” He sounded calm and important, like the President. “I need you to show me something,” Richard added, and the very thought stirred his insides. “Something precious to me.”
Jane sobbed unabashed, her face in a pained moue.
“Are you listening?” he asked, still fussing with his nails.
She ignored him, retreating into herself. Her head lolled, stringy hair draping down.
The knife dropped, and Richard clapped his hands not an inch from her face, hair spraying wildly. Her head shot upright.
“Are you listening?” he spat.
Jane nodded bodily, her neck tensed stiff.
He calmed, and picked up the knife. “You are about to die. Understand?” It registered over her face, making her old. “So stop fighting,” Richard went on, poised as ever. “This is it, it’s over, there’s no help for it—”
Don’t have to kill her.
Richard gave pause, blinking stupidly. “So just… just stop,” he finished, distracted.
“But why?” she growled. Her eyebrows made a V and her lips creased. “Why!” She flounced weakly in her chair.
Richard turned cold, his eyes unfocused. “Because you have what I need,�
� he said. He stood and rounded her chair, knife at his side. “Now, show me who you really are, Jane.”
“No, nooo!” she screamed, turning childish. It was happening; the change, melting away years, and Richard drank it like wine. He stood over her for a full minute, watching her true self emerge like an egg from a shell. His pants bulged.
Somber, he lowered the knife at her throat. She gasped as the silvered blade dimpled her skin and then wailed, lunatic words mixed in. Richard felt her larynx vibrate, like a purring cat.
“Shhhh, shhhh, s’okay,” Richard poured into her ear. He too was crying, though out of a putrid joy. “Do you hate me?” he asked, knife flat against the supple throat.
A vomitous ‘Yes!’ that had no place in a young woman.
Richard nodded, his cheek rubbing hers, their tears mixing. “I do too, I do too,” he blubbered, and pressed tight against her. A hug. “I do too,” he repeated several times, reveling in the raw energy of this exchange.
Energy, the bruja had said. It feeds, she’d said. Richard’s guilty eyes shifted.
He returned to Jane. “What do you think it’s like when we die?” he asked, himself regressing, his own, malformed inner child coming out to play.
Jane only screamed.
“I think it’ll be like dreaming,” he said cheerily. “That’s what I think, like a dream where you don’t wake up and everything’s okay forever, like.” He pressured the knife, enough to blanch her throat. He started it deeper, to make the crying stop, the climax of their strange sex—
Feeds.
He looked over his shoulder, as if hearing a noise.
Energy.
There, he could feel it—It, the presence.
Day-mone. Feeds.
Richard said “Shut up,” looking discursively about the room. It was happening again.
Break the channel.
Conflicted, now. He thought of opening the bitchcunt’s throat, the sheer bliss of it, knowing her in a way denied even to herself. But afterward comes the—
Feeding.
— the emptiness, that unascribable sense of loss, like orgasm but deeper, like losing some soul.
The knife eased.
Break the channel.
Raised an inch…
Discipline.
Hesitated…
A certain time.
Then the knife was gone from her, Richard stumbling backward to slam the empty bars. He looked at the bound and screaming woman as though just finding her.
Don’t have to do this.
He entertained the thought. Suppose he abandoned his deplorable vice, renounced his invisible best friend—would that be so bad?
“Help!” Jane cried, a world away. “He-e-e-e-elp!” The note evoked stressing springs.
“Shut up,” Richard said again, now to her. “Shut up.”
She quieted, abjectly, perhaps realizing the knife was gone.
Break the channel. Break the…
At once, the thought was joined by that familiar tug of contention, an evil finger stabbing the most tender part of him, oh God, stop it, stop! A gunshot felt like this. He winced with only half his face.
Break the channel. Discipline—
The feeling intensified as if on a rheostat, now pure cataclysm, worlds ending.
He hates the discipline—
The dream: the demon, awarding him that fatherly touch, so warm and indemnifying, the only he’d ever had. It too was a kind of love, excelling that of a mother’s kiss, of even his bizarre union with the bound woman before him—
Something opened in Richard, what felt like a releasing hand or a turning lock. The knife thudded to the floor, where it would stay.
The call came mid-afternoon.
Marylyn Murphy answered rabidly, the handset in both hands, a mother in waiting. When she realized it was the call, she made a choked gasp and screamed her husband into the room. Janey had been found; alive.
The two were gone in less than a minute, sloven in their house clothes.
Downtown, the Murphys hotfooted into the police station, bringing cushions of air like passing cars. The two were met by a plainclothes detective who ushered them through the bullpen.
The detective stopped them outside a frosted-glass door, his name in a hand-painted arc. “Now, before you enter—” he started, but Mrs. Murphy cut him off.
“Let me see her,” she said, with a crazy calm. “I want to see her.” She started through, but the detective put a hand on her shoulder.
“Before you enter,” he resumed, gently but sternly, “you must understand that your daughter has been through an extreme trauma of some kind, and she is not… herself.”
The words went unheard. “Let me see her,” Mrs. Murphy repeated, shouting without raising her voice. Her male half, Roy Murphy, was silently making the same demand, with a bald stare.
The detective opened the door and stood aside. The Murphys wasted no time.
Inside was a C-shaped desk, several kempt houseplants, and, along the far wall, a couch, on which sat a female officer and Jane Murphy, swaddled in a charcoal-colored blanket. Jane didn’t look up.
Marilyn was the first in. She huffed her daughter’s name, but then stopped in her tracks. Something was wrong. The young woman on the couch was definitely her daughter, disappeared these four days… but at the same time, not. The girl stared into nowhere, not acknowledging her parents or anything else. Her eyes were lost in bruised black sockets, the head canted low, lips parted.
“Janey?” Marilyn said again, unmoved.
Jane looked up, but with the detachment of a swaying tree. Marylyn thought her entire temperament different, somehow removed. Nowhere was the girl she’d raised and loved and fought with; this one shockingly wrong, like a car fitted with a strange new engine. This wasn’t her daughter at all, but some deficient look-alike.
“Janey,” a third time, and Marilyn at last made for the couch. Without a word, the female officer relinquished her spot and disappeared through the door, a phantom. Marylyn took one side of Jane, Roy the other.
Jane passed a dazed glance between the two, then mouthed, “Mom?”
“Yes, yes, we’re here,” Marylyn said. Roy chimed in with something similar, putting a tentative arm around his daughter’s shoulders. It was like hugging stone.
Marylyn leaned in close and took Jane’s head in her hands, veiny fingers framing the vapid face. She started a kiss, but was again struck by the girl’s wasted new aura, which forbade such. There was a pained element about her, as though suffering some chronic injury. Or, suspicion.
Marylyn hugged tight, weeping openly. Jane responded to this, slithering stiff arms from the blanket, but her hug differed from those delivered previously—apprehension there, Marylyn noted, and suspicion, too, protruding from her embrace like a gun under a coat.Marilyn rejected this, however. The girl was just traumatized, was all, like the detective had said. Traumatized. She held her daughter’s trembling person, squeezing for dear life.
But Jane’s embrace grew no softer, nor would it.
A Simple Job
Jason Andrew
I have never heard of a murderer who was not afraid of a ghost.
John Philpot Curran
Jacob Heller impatiently walked the halls of the dark, cluttered McMansion. He passed a garish, blinking pinball machine, decorated with a semi-nude pinup model from the 80s arching her back and ready for any player. A score of framed classic movie posters lined the walls leading to the crown jewel of the collection; a life-sized replica of some sort of famous metallic robot welding a fake tin-played sword guarding the front door like a twisted parody of a medieval gargoyle. The detective tried not to think about how much cash the client blew on useless toys and gadgets, especially since he was two months late on rent. “It’s a simple job to keep on living.”
It was chilly enough inside the house that he could, on occasion, catch view of tiny wisps of his breath as he stepped through a cold spot. Such a thing might not be a surpr
ise during the winter in Seattle; however, it was a scorching summer night outside at Seattle’s trendy Capitol Hill. He checked and double-checked the thermostat, the vents, and then every room once more until he came to the inevitable conclusion that the cold spots could not have been artificial. How was it done?
He adjusted his black gloves. It was a nervous habit that stemmed from his first real encounter with the occult and a burn upon his hands that would never heal. The client offered a week’s pay to search the house and a substantial bonus if Heller could prove that the house was haunted. If this problem was supernatural, there could only be two causes and the quickest smoke-test was in the kitchen. Heller opened the modern-style glass refrigerator and scrounged around the contents until he found a fresh plastic container of milk.
The opulent wealth and casual waste of it brought to mind the idea of a Faustian deal and that meant a demon. He poured himself a glass of milk, retraced his steps, and to his deep disappointment it remained fresh and cold. The presence of the infernal always curdled milk and this place was clean. Somehow it would have been easier to deal with the client if he had made some sort of infernal pact. Heller struggled to push down the bitterness about his own life and empty bank account to concentrate on the fat bonus awaiting him in the morning.
Of all of the spooks and monsters that waited in the night, spirits were the most complex and randomly dangerous. A violent death or a tremendous task incomplete usually accounted for a ghost that refused to pass beyond the veil. Few of those cases involved happy thoughts of puppies and warm summer nights.
Taking care not to waste a single drop, he poured a line of purified salt in a circle and carefully stepped into it. He pulled forth a sealed plastic bag of ground sage and then mashed it in a small wooden bowl. Next, Heller lit a match and then dropped it into the green mush. The sweet smell of cedar and rosemary wafted through out the kitchen and then with the help of a tiny plastic fan eventually through the house.
Heller spoke in a calm, but strong voice, keeping certain to avoid a threatening tone. “I am cleansing this space of negative energies. This is a safe place to communicate.” Cold halogen lights flickered and swayed above the detective. He winced hoping that they wouldn’t shatter. “I only want to talk.”
